Wednesday, July 19

The John Coltrane Record That Made Modern Music

"Today, exactly 50 years will have passed since the death of John Coltrane, one of the most groundbreaking and technically gifted jazz musicians ever. Over the course of his four decades on earth, Coltrane lived and breathed to create jazz saturated with dissonance and arrhythmia and tenacity—raw jazz, powerful jazz, jazz hundreds of stories tall. To commemorate the half century that has passed since Coltrane’s death, many will revisit his most famous songs ('My Favorite Things', 'In a Sentimental Mood') and records (Giant Steps, A Love Supreme, Blue Train). However, too few will reflect upon Coltrane's most tenacious and inaccessible album, Interstellar Space, which was released posthumously and is, in many ways, Coltrane’s most influential record, its echoes still heard today in everything from electronic music to some of the world’s biggest hip-hop acts. ..."GQNew Yorker: Why Did Ralph Ellison Despise Modern Jazz?Discography